Sheila Crowell

Good news - a little less paperwork for some human studies: Planning an NIH Application involving Basic Experimental Studies with Humans (BESH)? | Grants & Funding grants.nih.gov/news-events/...

"tapering plans" for HRT is a death sentence if you've had gender-affirming surgeries, like I have with my orchi, because your body will just wither away and die without hormones. Unspeakable evil. Demonic shit. You don't hate these motherfuckers enough.

A more parsimonious explanation: Congressional Republicans rejected cuts by the Trump administration—to science and elsewhere—primarily when they believed they would be electorally harmed because their district/state would lose out on funding.

Important, but distinct from being 'pro-science'.

Nobody believes this anymore but it’s absolutely true!

The COVID-19 pandemic was as bad as it was not just because Trump bungled it, but because he actively made it worse from the start. Almost everyone has forgotten this.

"Peace" achieved by force and control is called coercion. It's not true peace and it falls apart the minute the coercive person turns their back. It doesn't take a PhD in psychology to know this, but here I am anyway.

A cartoon showing a middle-aged mouse at an office desk, remembering (in a thought bubble) a childhood birthday, with his parent bringing him a cake with a single candle; cartoon glial cells are controlling a cable that links to his early memories. Infantile amnesia is the global loss of episodic and contextual memories formed in early life. Image credit: Birte Doludda

Infantile #amnesia limits our recall of early-life memories, but what is its cellular basis? @tjryan.bsky.social &co reveal that transient #microglial activity during postnatal development regulates infant #memory persistence & retrieval in mice @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4a0SoGH

New paper from our team: Can ML identify which adolescents benefit most from school-based mindfulness?

In 8,376 students (MYRIAD trial), models detected statistically significant but clinically negligible differential effects (d ≈ .07–.08).

Precision prevention is hard...

I can’t believe you lefty Luddites hate tech so much that you embrace mRNA vaccines, heat pumps, electric bikes, hybrid work, renewable power (and awesome advancements in storage), space telescopes, and hot/cold running water but reject the planet destroying plagiarism enrich the worst people bots!

Meta Begins $65 Million Election Push to Advance A.I. Agenda

"Meta is preparing to spend $65 M this year to boost state politicians who are friendly to the AI industry...To do that, Meta is quietly starting two new super PACs... The new PACs join two others already started by Meta, one of which is focused on California" www.nytimes.com/2026/02/18/t...

Jay Bhattacharya named acting CDC director Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dismissed Jim O’Neill, whom Trump will nominate to lead the National Science Foundation, from the CDC job last week.

One can certainly do two jobs poorly but how would we know without verifying the theory.
Meanwhile the measles outbreak in the US continues to spread uncontrollably but I digress.
www.politico.com/news/2026/02...

Wildly, the cumulative odds of being killed as a woman who had a baby every ~two years were roughly the same as those for a man who fought a significant battle every ~four years

#Statistics thought of the day: If you think you can find new disease subtypes by empirically clustering patients, think again: www.fharrell.com/post/cluster... #StatsSky

This editorial discusses the critical value of human-generated scientific writing in the era of large language models (LLMs), arguing that writing is essential to structured thinking and research comprehension. Writing as Thinking: The act of writing structure's thoughts, sorting research data, and identifying the main message, unlike LLMs which may lack true understanding or accountability. LLM Hallucinations: LLM-generated text requires rigorous verification because these models can produce incorrect information or fake references. Human vs. AI Roles: While LLMs are useful tools for brainstorming, improving grammar, or overcoming writer's block, human researchers must maintain control to engage in the creative task of shaping a compelling narrative.

Writing forces your brain to coordinate memory, reasoning, and meaning-making simultaneously.

Every time you write, you rewire toward clearer thinking. Every time you let an LLM do it, you rewire toward consumption.

Grammarly Is a Cheating Machine - Daily Nous Grammarly is sometimes thought by instructors to be a relatively benign writing tool app, akin to a sophisticated spelling and grammar checker. That may have once been true, but as Kieran Barker, an e...

Profs, Grammarly is NOT the benign writing assistant you may have thought it is, but a powerful cheating machine that includes tools explicitly designed to help students hide the cheating done with it...

FDA reverses course, agrees to review Moderna’s flu vaccine The FDA reversed course and told Moderna it would review its application for a new flu vaccine, the company announced Wednesday.

The fight isn't over but this is very very good news.

www.statnews.com/2026/02/18/f...

The left tried for decades to pass green energy subsidies, passed them, the subsidies worked, and now literally the entire planet's electricity grid is going to convert to solar+battery. It just doesn't feel like "tech" because it mostly produces kinda boring blue collar jobs instead of billionaires

@altfda.altgov.info challenged us to list #5Things that each of us Alts think have caused the most damage in our agencies over the past year. Each of the five items is chock full of sub-items…adding up to far more “things.” Here goes.

Exclusive: White House uses USAID funds for budget director Vought's security, documents show The White House budget office is using millions of dollars from the former U.S. foreign aid agency to pay for the security detail of Russell Vought, President Donald Trump's budget chief and an archit...

The Project 2025 author is using millions of dollars in USAID money for his own security detail.

It is estimated that 762,000 people have *already died* as a result of Elon Musk and Russell Vought’s obscene murder of USAID, including more than 500,000 children.

Vought is a mass murderer.

Amen. Amen. Amen.

You can't just turn the funding spigots off, and then back on again and expect progress.

Writing is thinking.

It's not some marginal boring task you can skip. It's the heart of it.

Black Residents Win Key Ruling in ‘Cancer Alley’ Environmental Racism Case The lawsuit could force a jury to decide if turning Black communities into sacrifice zones is a legacy of slavery.

A judge ruled that groups representing residents of Louisiana’s Cancer Alley can proceed with their landmark lawsuit seeking a pause on toxic industrial plants in two majority‑Black districts

Someone has sure already made this observation but the fact they can convert all those empty warehouses into prison camps means they could have converted them into housing, community centers, job training centers or, hell, libraries or schools all along. It’s always a matter of will not resources.

POLITICO Pro: White House withholds NASA science funds The administration did not say why it had done so.

The administration continues to lawlessly withhold funds appropriated by Congress.

subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2026...

COMMENTING GUIDE: Opposing Two Trump Regime Rules Banning Gender-Affirming Care, Deadline 2/17/26 Creator profile picture Shouldn't Need to Be a Lawyer by Matthew Cortland January 26 Edit I. Bottom Line Up Front The Trump Regime's Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has published two companion proposed rules designed to eliminate access to gender-affirming care for minors nationwide. Together, these rules would: Ban hospitals from providing this care (CMS-3481-P) — regardless of how the care is paid for Prohibit Medicaid and CHIP from covering this care (CMS-2451-P) — cutting off funding for lower-income families You have the opportunity to help defend trans kids by submitting comments against these vile proposed rules. Because even if a state wanted to continue covering gender-affirming care through Medicaid, the hospital rule would prevent hospitals from providing it. The two rules use different regulatory mechanisms to accomplish the same policy goal: eliminating access to gender-affirming care for anyone under 18 (or under 19 for CHIP). You should submit your comment to both dockets. The deadline is 5PM ET on February 17, 2026.

Public comment on Dr Oz's proposed rules to ban gender-affirming care for youth closes 2/17

One rule bans hospital-based care, the other eliminates Medicaid/CHIP coverage

Together they'd make care virtually unavailable nationwide, including in shield law states

www.patreon.com/posts/149210...

The predicament of heritable confounders - Nature Genetics This Perspective argues that diagnoses derived from self-reports, electronic health records and self-administered questionnaires introduce heritable bias that confounds the interpretation of data from...

Very interesting perspective article by @caina89.bsky.social et al on genetic studies in psychiatry.

The authors argue that studies increasingly rely on "shallow" phenotyping (self-reported), leading to biases in estimation of genetic relationships between disorders.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Franzi Schimmer captured this Grizzly bear in Brooks Falls, Alaska just floating along, tippy-tapping down the river, browsing the salmon.

Prior to hibernation, up to 40% of a bear's body mass is fat, which is less dense than water (~0.9 g/cm^2), so the murder-monster is also a floaty-boaty.

1/21 OK we are gonna start with this story. This is gonna be long and a little nuanced so stick with me. There will be a lot in here that will address SSA employees directly so if you know an SSA employee, please share with them! And if you see any errors or gaps in my knowledge, please let me know!

Yes it’s Valentine’s Day. But it’s also the chosen birthday of Frederick Douglass who was born in 1818 on a plantation in Talbot County, Maryland. He escaped from slavery & rose to become the most eloquent and forceful voice for the abolition of slavery & for Black voting rights in the U.S.

European Parliament Votes Overwhelmingly For "The Full Recognition Of Trans Women As Women" The resolution, though nonbinding, is a significant shot at those who seek to erode transgender rights on the continent.

In incredible news, the European Parliament has voted overwhelmingly for "The Full Recognition Of Trans Women As Women."

Even the center-right European People's Party voted for the declaration.

It will form a foundation for their position at the UN Commission on the Status of Women.

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